


... and a Happy New Year

by Jen (ConsultingWriters)



Category: James Bond - All Media Types, Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Skyfall (2012) - Fandom, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: (Mild I promise), Aftermath of Torture, Alcohol, Apologies, Christmas, Christmas Party, Cookies, Costumes, Crossover, Everybody seems to be a Holmes, F/M, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, I am aware it is January, I am mad, I was on hiatus, Kidnapping, M is Q's father, M/M, Other, Prompt Fill, Q is a Holmes, Snowdog, Supernatural Elements, This is mad, This was hilariously difficult, Tony is a Holmes, What Was I Thinking?, Which doesn't seem to do this justice, ah well, i just
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-11
Updated: 2014-01-11
Packaged: 2018-01-08 10:05:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,120
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1131340
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ConsultingWriters/pseuds/Jen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A dozen or so prompts collide, in the ConsultingWriters Christmas Special!</p>
            </blockquote>





	... and a Happy New Year

**Author's Note:**

> As a Christmas special, I asked followers of mine and Lex's prompt fill blog to put in as many prompts as they liked, that would all combine into a special Christmas fic. Over a dozen emerged. Thus, this fic.
> 
> All of the prompts can be found in the final Author's Notes. Other than that? Just, enjoy, and suspend all disbelief!
> 
> Here's to a wonderful New Year to you all. Be safe, be happy. 
> 
> Jen.

Q opened his envelope, and let out a slight groan.

Tanner.

Tanner was an absolute _bugger_ to buy presents for, given that nobody knew what the man actually liked, and he was an encyclopaedia on every single member of staff in MI6 which meant he consistently bought absolutely stellar presents.

“And you?” he asked Bond weakly.

His partner, his lover, shot him a truly demented grin. “Eve,” he said, with grim satisfaction. “This should be fun. I’m debating sex toys.”

“Sexual harassment, dear,” Q returned, with a light sigh and an inability to stop grinning; Eve was always the type to make very mocking Secret Santas, and thus Bond was somewhat vindicated in making her one equally ridiculous. “I’ll help, if you want.”

Bond raised a teasing eyebrow. “Sounds intriguing,” he returned, and winked lasciviously, looking over Q eagerly; the latter gave him a teasingly stern glance, which was honestly somewhat ruined by the very large Christmas hat Q had been wearing for the entire day.

_"I like Christmas. I'm allowed to like Christmas. Peace. Joy. General merriment."_

_"You're an atheist."_

_"... and?!"_

Bond had, sadly, declined wearing anything in the way of hats. However, he had agreed to be involved in the Christmas party the next week, which was compulsory dressing-up on a Christmas theme; for reasons pertaining to a lost game of poker with most of Q-branch, Q and Bond were going as the Snowman and the Snowdog.

The bickering had lasted for two days, before Bond had finally conceded to being the Snowdog – the defeat only came when Lily had begged her father to please daddy please be the Snowdog. In the face of a tearful small child, Bond was rendered putty.

Q was brutally satisfied, and had spent most of his salary (and MI6 budget) for the year trying to source and/or create a costume. Heloise – the most bad-tempered and generally frightening of the Q-branch staff – had wound up being absolutely instrumental, and Lily had an extraordinarily creative mind for a child of her age.

They had the week to deal with Secret Santa presents; Q found Tanner an ungodly large bottom of very nice whiskey and some rather psychotic socks – “ _all for a decent price, it’s amazing what one can find on ebay_ ” – and Bond went all out, essentially raiding Ann Summers for the first and last time of his life – “ _Ann Summers is embarrassingly vanilla_ ” – to make Eve’s rather spectacular construction of a present.

(She wouldn’t finish the packets of candy cocks until March).

The day of the party dawned with Q in a snowman outfit – literally four times his normal size, fully rounded, he couldn’t really move his arms which was annoying but he would live – and Bond was a dog.

Nobody could stop laughing, and nobody really wanted to. M managed to practically choke laughing at the man; Bond was the father to his grandchild, and evidently as uncomfortable as he was ever likely to get.

Q, meanwhile, was swanning about in his snowman outfit without a care in the world.

M was Father Christmas, because that seemed stupidly apt, and thus Eve had wound up as the single most sexually alluring elf anybody had seen in their lives. Alec, who had been dating her for a decently long while now, pretty much visibly hardened at the sight of it.

To Bond’s chagrin, Alec had managed to get away with being a very half-hearted Christmas Tree; in essence, he had attached baubles to his lapels, and was otherwise in a very sharp and very elegant suit, that Q had apparently been involved in the creation of. Bastard.

Given that they were all in costume, they had started drinking from the off. By the time they exchanged their Secret Santa gifts, everybody was already at a comfortable level of inebriation.

Q wound up with a gorgeous hand-knitted cardigan from double-oh one; Q hadn’t known she was able to do so, and it was really a wonderful surprise. She’d even sourced the alpaca wool from South America, which meant it was probably the single softest thing Q had ever handled in his entire life to date.

Bond had a gift from R, who clearly had no idea what to do, and so had played it relatively safe – only, it transpired, she hadn’t. Q watched with absolute, awestruck joy as Bond put his new watch on, only to have it abruptly cause him quite profound pain in his wrist. “I’m bleeding,” he said, with deep shock and genuine upset.

R looked to Q, and smiled slightly. “Tracker beads, my own design,” she said quietly. “I’ve been testing the prototypes since July, and they’ve only just become ready. So it’s a gift to both of you, really, but the watch is also rather nice.”

Really, Bond couldn’t possibly deny that. It was a very, very nice watch.

One table had been devoted to Secret Santa/Actual Father Christmas – and it had been universally agreed that calling Father Christmas ‘Santa’ was an unforgivable Americanism that had already culminated in Nigel being thrown unceremoniously out of Q-branch until he grovelled frantically and brought a lot of baked goods – and with it, Q had laboriously left out cookies, mince pies, milk, carrots and sugar cubes for the entire collected sleigh brigade.

Q had made it Very Clear that nobody was to touch the MI6 Father Christmas Cookies. They were there to ensure that Father Christmas actually left gifts, and if anybody ate them Q would destroy their lives.

Bond had, unfortunately, not really been briefed; Q had assumed he had understood, instinctively, just how important Christmas was and thus would not be moronic enough to cross any boundaries concerning the sanctity of Christmas.

Because of this, and a collection of other things, the evening began to degenerate just a little bit, just around the edges.

Ultimately, Q hated the world and everything in it. He hated alcohol and he hated Bond and he most definitely, entirely and completely hated Alec goddamn Trevelyan for being an absolute _bastard_ and deciding that conducting a drinking game with MI6 double-ohs (plus Eve) was in any sense an intelligent idea. He hated everybody.

There were many reasons for this hatred.

Firstly: the Father Christmas Cookies were chocolate.

Secondly: playing Truth or Dare with trained killers is a Very Bad Idea, given that they are afraid of very little, and have truly spectacular imaginations.

Thirdly: Eve was and is a sex demon.

Fourthly: A prerequisite of Christmas parties in England is some form of horrendous weather. It is a known fact, for all those born and raised here. There will almost never be snow (unless it’s in sufficient quantities to cock up trains for the foreseeable future), but horizontal sleet and extreme rain is something of a given.

Fifthly: MI6 operatives have guns. Lots and lots and lots of guns. All of which have a blanket ban during Christmas parties.

In short:

Bond ate the cookies. It rained. Tanner noticed. Eve noticed. Eve and Alec nearly had sex in the middle of Q-branch. R stripped naked. Q noticed the cookies were gone. Bond was blamed. Alec was blamed. Eve was indignant on Q’s behalf. Alec didn’t get to orgasm. It continued to rain. R won three litres of vodka from M. Q was told off by his father for being petulant. Alec got revenge-drunk. Eve tried to work out how her new sex toys worked. Q was aroused. Bond was aroused. Alec was aroused. It stopped raining.

For reasons best known to tequila, Alec decided that his erection was what had stopped the rain – and until he orgasmed, it would never rain again.

Oddly enough, Eve didn’t quite buy it; Alec, in great distress and wanting to save his erection for actual-sex as opposed to a-quick-wank decided to go outside, into the not-rain, and somehow illustrate that Eve was affected the entire climate of the United Kingdom by not having sex with her that moment.

Everybody in MI6 watched on monitors, as Alec ran around yelling that his cock controlled the rain, and began warning citizens – in fluent Russian – that the impending hosepipe ban that would appear that summer would be entirely the fault of one Eve Moneypenny.

“We should probably collect him, before he assaults somebody,” M mused at one stage, nursing quite a large whiskey. “Tanner, would you be so kind?”

Tanner delegated out to Eve, as it was technically her fault, and also employed a little help from Bond and Q; Q was all set to refuse, but M told him he would be in Deep Trouble if he didn’t.

Those who didn’t know were very confused. Those who did know restrained their instinctive snorts; Q was extremely scary when angered, and teasing him about the fact that his boss was his father was probably one of the easiest ways to anger the man.

Meanwhile, Q was still not speaking to Bond, by virtue of the missing Father Christmas Cookies. Bond still had a milk moustache, for god’s sake, and seemed deliriously unrepentant without really noticing that Q was probably going to kill him.

Nevertheless, the statistical probability of Alec’s arrest was mounting by the microsecond; Q heaved a sigh, and conceded that they would need to retrieve him before MI6’s reputation was forever besmirched, and MI5 would have a possible basis for trying to steal parts of their budget.

In retrospect, Bond honestly wasn’t sure how it happened.

He and Q had parted ways, and begun an exploratory look around MI6 and the surrounding areas. Obviously, Q was patched into Bond’s earpiece, and was trying to dictate where and how he was supposed to wind up; halfway through a rather irate piece of direction, interspersed with delightfully emotive jabs at betrayal, cruelty, sanctity, Q had abruptly gone off-comms.

That, and Alec was nowhere to be found.

It took another half-hour before Bond’s phone rang. “James?”

“Hello Eve,” Bond replied, voice only very slightly slurred. “How can I help?”

Eve couldn’t stop giggling. “S’Q,” she said happily – there was abrupt crash, some swearing, and Eve let out a cry of pain that disintegrated into more laughter – “s’here, and s’not happy. Not happy at all.”

“Alec?” Bond asked, with somewhat tired amusement.

“Don’t tell him it’s me!”

Bond rolled his eyes; all he could really deduce was that Alec had double-backed, and with Eve’s help, and somehow done something to Q. “Eve, is Bill there?”

“Yep.”

“M?”

“Yep.”

“Could you pass me over?”

More giggling. A lot more giggling. Not all Eve; Bond could recognise Tanner’s voice anywhere, and his rather frantic insistence that Bond not be told that he was involved. “Bill’s gone.”

“You’re very unsubtle. Where is Q?”

“Come see.”

Bond came; he arrived to see Q wrapped merrily in tinsel and wrapping paper, with a lovely red velvet Christmas hat perched on his head, looking exceptionally irate. “You’re late, and I’m still pissed off with you,” he said crossly. “They ran away, before you ask.”

“Why?”

“Apparently, it would be amusing,” Q returned, in a tone of deep annoyance, an instant before the lights went out.

There was a long moment of silence. “Q…”

“That would be a security alert,” Q murmured, and – for the first time – began to truly struggle. “James, get me out of here. I need to get onto the computer systems and work out what’s going on, while you – and the rest of MI bloody 6, including my _bloody_ father who should damn well know better – are completely fucking hammered.”

Bond grabbed at him, only beginning to grasp that alcohol really did have an effect on his general perceptions and hand-eye coordination; he could usually break Q out of any given handcuffs or restraints in less than thirty seconds – established at length, in a variety of creative contexts – and yet now, one minute and fourteen seconds later, Q had only just been freed.

The door broke in.

Q, he threw a bauble. It broke over the head of one of the assailants, who swore, and focused in on Q. “Evenin’, Quartermaster,” one grinned, with complete and callous abandonment of the letter ‘t’. “I’ll be needin’ you to come wiv us.”

Bond knew of Q’s legendary lack of temperament concerning those with extremely sloppy diction; he watched the tension in the young man’s body cramp up a notch, while he contemplated the honest chances of managing to garrotte somebody with tinsel.

_Concentrate, Bond._

Behind his back, Bond accessed and pressed the panic button. In theory, everybody would have long since gathered that there was an issue; given the general levels of inebriation, however, Bond was prepared to bet that they had yet to appreciate the extent. Not to mention that not a single bloody one of them was actually armed.

The men had to be handed credit: they had picked an exceptionally good time to attack.

Bond leapt forward with tinsel, and made a valiant effort. “Bond, do not be a moron.”

There was a single gunshot, and Bond fell.

Q couldn’t breathe for a very long moment. The escalation was notable, shocking. Bond was very still, there was blood, Q was shaking and had no way in hell of managing to defend himself against the abrupt surge of people who swamped him, a gun against the nape of his neck, Bond left still and pale and the image of him scarred indelibly on Q’s retinas, as he was hauled away.

-

So cold. So incredibly cold, and he hurt. It all hurt, everything hurt. It just didn’t stop any more. Time had gone, time had gone, there was no sense left of place or time or context, and there was a vague awareness that it should have been Christmas, that it had to be soon or have passed, and that Bond should have been there but then he was also supposed to have been on a mission, so maybe he wasn’t there, so maybe he would never be there, maybe he had never been there.

Christmas music. The fuckers were playing Christmas music.

_Whoa I wish it could be Christmas every day…_

Q was shivering out of his skin, vaguely aware that he was probably running a fever by now, which would have potentially quite serious repercussions on his overall health if he didn’t get help soon.

They were late. MI6 were bloody late, Q mused, and sobbed a little and laughed a little as he thought about how they were probably all still drinking, and wondered if Tanner knew they had been spiking his drinks with twice as much alcohol as he had been led to believe, or if it had stopped raining yet.

Fuck, winter was horrible.

“Happy Christmas, Q.”

Q didn’t bother replying. They wanted information that he would not, and could not, give. Unfortunately, they knew precisely who he was; it meant he was very unlikely to die, but substantially more likely to be hurt very thoroughly as they tilted him ever closer to break point.

It is amazing, how much damage can be caused in a single week. Just a week. In the grand scheme of things, no time at all; a hiccup in the fabric of a life, Q’s life, and hopefully not the very end of it because god fucking damn it he was not going to die like this, not like this, not with Carol of the fucking Bells running on repeat and spattered with rough fists and cold words and iced blades, and Q’s head was fucking spinning.

An alarm beeped. Just a watch alarm.

“Midnight,” one of them noted, with quiet surprise. “Christmas Day. No sign of Santa.”

A week. Only a week. A single week.

Father Christmas, Q corrected internally, and laughed burblingly to himself and cried expressionlessly, cringing back as bodies moved and songs flicked into new ones, and he would never hear them again without remembering this and that was not fair, not this, they do not get to take this.

Q tasted blood, and coughed, pain hammering through his chest.

Christmas. Christmas Day.

Sherlock was going to kill him for missing it. The Holmes boys had a certain type of insistence over the sanctity of certain events in the year, which generally constituted Christmas, Mummy’s birthday, and Q’s birthday. Nobody quite knew why everybody else had fallen off the radar, but it was probably because everybody still treated Q like a child, Mummy was scary, and Christmas just mattered.

Mind drifting, body beginning to show the edges of too much strain, and Q dreamt of a Christmas forever ago, when Mycroft had been home and Sherlock had been off the drugs and Mummy and Daddy were both happy and sharp and could see through their tricks and their cleverness, and Q smiled very slightly and remembered, wanted to remember, sank into it in lieu of other options.

Fuck, and he was supposed to be seeing Tony.

It occurred – as Q near enough passed out, not breathing, barely able to breathe, and still so cold so cold so cold – that with a superhero sibling, a genius, and Tony Stark, he should have been retrieved a long time ago.

He had to be a long way away.

_… Merry Christmas your arse, I pray god it’s our last…_

Q snorted to himself, whimpered, retched out bile and regretted all of the above.

He was unconscious when the door shattered inwards.

__-_ _

___Q. Q, can you hear me?_ _ _

___I need you to listen to me, Q, just listen to me. It’s me, I’ve got you, and I’m going to try and help you. I need you to survive, Q, and you’re bloody well going to. You’re not going to leave me now, Q._ _ _

___Remember when you were little, and Sherlock was on the drugs?_ _ _

___I know, I know, shh, it’s over. He’s alright now. You know that, it’s over now. He’s safe. But do you remember the angel? The angel in the underground?_ _ _

___Shh, Q. Don’t try and talk._ _ _

___I know. It was only a story, but it was a nice one – and it worked, Q. It was real._ _ _

___Q, I know what I’m talking about._ _ _

___It was MI6, back then. I was a junior agent, told that an important government figure’s younger brother was in trouble. Sherlock’s dealer was working from Warren Street, of all places. We took him out, and we took Sherlock in._ _ _

___Yes, Q. Yes. Me._ _ _

___You believed in it then. Why does that have to change? Why does any of it have to change? Nothing has changed. I need you to trust me, Q. Believe me, believe in me. I’m the master of resurrections, remember?_ _ _

___Q._ _ _

___Q?_ _ _

___**Q?!**._ _ _

__-_ _

Q woke with a rather strange half-memory of an angel from when he was a child. From the Christmas he simply refused to think about any more. From seeing his brother emaciated and literally dying, visibly dying, and refusing any and all help. From Mycroft crying for one of only three times in Q’s memory. From Q praying to a god he didn’t believe in for help he didn’t believe existed.

Q had been nine.

Mycroft had been the one to show him, to help. Mycroft had held onto his baby brother’s hand, and smiled, wiped away Q’s tears, his own tears, and told Q a story, of a being who could fix everything, could take away Sherlock’s hurt – and Q had believed him.

Sherlock had disappeared.

When he finally came home, he was exhausted, thin. He was peaky, certainly, but devoid of the strung-out suggestion of near death; he wanted his drugs, but had learned to live without them, and the hurt was less.

Mycroft had created a form of magic, and Q had bought into it without a heartbeat of hesitation.

It was harder, nearly twenty years later, to be quite as taken in by it. Especially when it was him in pain, when Q could make no noise but flinched whenever anybody moved too quickly, and he couldn’t open his eyes without seeing somewhere else; the voices were kind, gentle, but voices could always be gentle and so very many of them lied.

“Hey Q, get up.”

Bloody fucking _sodding_ Americans. “What do you want?!” Q whined, a little more petulantly than he had originally intended.

“Knew the accent would wake him up.”

“Should have heard his kidnappers – all London accents, practically Cockney. I’m surprised Q didn’t manage to decapitate them on the spot.”

Q forced his eyes open, given that he was almost entirely certain he had lost his mind.

Tony Stark was grinning at him. “The fuck?” Q mumbled, eyes blurring as Sherlock loomed in his peripheral vision, and he whimpered at the movement, the closeness of a black silhouette, and there was Band Aid happening in the background, and Q retched violently. “Stop the music,” he managed, through an acid throat. “Stop it.”

It all stopped, and the silence was all-encompassing for a very long minute. “Q,” a voice asked, more gently.

His angel.

“Q, you’re safe here,” his angel told him, voice calm and careful, so loving, so loving, and Q sobbed slightly at the simply chance of it because please, please let it be him, his James, his angel.

Too much.

His head hurt.

“Hey kid, your dad’s here.”

Q forced his eyes open, mainly because it seemed as though the bloody Yank wouldn’t stop talking in the imminent future. “Hello?” he asked, in a rather unfocused rasp.

Immediately, the Yank was in Q’s direct eyeline. Tony bloody sodding Stark. “Hey kid. How ya doin’?”

“You’re turning into a caricature of yourself,” Q remarked snidely – or at least thought he had remarked snidely – before Tony was yanked out of the way, and M replaced him. “Oh. Hey.”

“‘Hey’, he says, after a week in the custody of irate Iranians,” M muttered; he looked very tired, the slightly pinched look he got after too long of working too hard, and Q did honestly feel quite apologetic but it was his dad, and right now he needed to work out why one of four siblings, his adopted parent, and his boyfriend, were all in one place. “Bond, I hope you can get something more intelligent out of him.”

Bond.

Q smiled weakly. “James,” he murmured.

“Your voice is trashed, don’t talk,” Bond advised him gently, stroking hair out of his face; Q leant into his touch, eyes falling slightly shut, but looking up at him with a form of urgency that Bond understood immediately. “They’re all dead, we’re working on why they had you in the first place – we’ll need a debrief as soon as possible. We contacted Tony…”

Q groaned; Tony was impossible when he had been called on for help. They had only discovered that they were even related about a year and a half previously; Tony had been investigating his own past, when he discovered a curious link between himself and the Holmes family.

Within a handful of days, it had been established – to everybody’s shock and some degree of irritation – that Tony Stark was, in fact, a Holmes.

It was just another facet of an already fractured family. Mummy Holmes had died when the Holmes boys were still children, and Q had been living with adopted parents since he was a teenager – Mycroft and Sherlock had moved out, by the time it had been established that Tiber Holmes was involved in drugs, and neither were deemed adequate guardians for a child – and then, it transpired that aforementioned Holmes parent had also had an illegitimate child with a woman in the States.

The family just continued to exponentially expand, to Mycroft’s chagrin in particular.

Mycroft had to be given credit, however: he was exceptionally good at handling the various children in the Holmes family.

Sherlock had been dispatched, with John, on a plane to New York; he was being a nightmare while extremely worried about Q, and thus Mycroft had taken executive action.

Q had been located, and was now being looked after by, Mycroft’s brother – Tony Stark – along with Sherlock and (mercifully) John Watson, with James Bond onside and Q’s adopted father also installed.

Obviously, none of the actual children were allowed to see Q while he was still in severe medical jeopardy, and actually post-torture. Despite Hamish’s absolute insistence to the contrary, he was not old enough to see human beings in that kind of state.

Christmas Day, and Mycroft had needed to throw Christmas for Hamish and Lily.

“He’s done what?!” Q asked, in absolute shock. “No. You have to be kidding, because Mycroft Holmes cannot be busy looking after a pair of prepubescents? This is Mycroft.”

Q couldn’t sit upright. He could, however, be fed pulverised turkey and potato, with enough gravy to sink a small battleship and Christmas pudding – which he point-blank refused to let Sherlock set fire to, on the grounds of a half-remembered Christmas from years ago – and Bond spooned it into his mouth, which was bloody humiliating, but it tasted really good.

“Yes. Mycroft has the children. It’s fine,” Bond placated. “Honest. Lily’s delighted, of course, and Hamish… well, Hamish is Hamish, so god alone knows, but hopefully Mycroft has enough common sense to instil blanket bans on fire and brandy…”

Q snorted, and abruptly coughed; he choked on blood a little, spat out some Christmas pudding, and Sherlock rolled his eyes while Bond mopped him up, and fed him some more ice cream. “Thanks for the sympathy,” Q rasped at Sherlock.

“You were mocking my son,” Sherlock pointed out primly; there was practically universal eye-rolling, given what Hamish was like. Q an Sherlock exchanged dry sarcasms, before Q noticed where his husband was.

Bond and Natasha had wound up busy doing what Q could only aptly describe as gossiping. Q was honestly finding it a little alarming; Bond had started chatting to the woman, and within moments, was entirely entranced.

Were it not for several years of marriage and a child, Q’s possessive streak would have probably been riled enough to cause near enough instant decapitation. As it was, Q managed to be surprisingly calm in extracting his husband from her vicinity, and shooting him the type of manic smile that boded ill for his testicles should he persist. "James, I thought you were supposed to be in Mozambique?" he broached quietly, somewhat concerned that they had lied to him - that Christmas had long-since passed, and for the sake of some tremulous remnants of his sanity, they were trying to keep that knowledge hidden.

M noticed; he gave Bond a sharp look, before his expression abruptly softened. Bond, meanwhile, let Natasha return to a strange almost-seduction of Hawkeye while his own attentions remained carefully with Q. "I was always going to make it home for you," he told Q gently, a little part of him seeming almost nervous, somehow. "Q, it's Christmas. I know how much it means to you. I'm just so sorry I couldn't..."

Q silenced him with an exceptionally painful movement to capture his lips in a kiss; Q could almost feel Bond's eye roll, letting himself be lowered back down to the pillow gently, tired but happy in a way he didn't quite have words to cover. Bond had been drawn up for the Mozambique mission months ago, and M had said from the outset that it needed to be Bond. "So who..?"

"Alec," M filled in, from over Bond's shoulder. "He stepped in a while ago. He and Eve agreed that you two had priority."

It was slightly surreal, being surrounded by quite so many people Q could honestly consider friends. His parents had been long since lost – and at Christmas, god, he never missed Mummy more – but he had the man who had admirably stepped in as a father, and siblings who seemed to have remained the same for as long as Q could remember. Sherlock was busy baking cookies - which Q had to confess was perhaps the single most surreal thing he had ever witnessed - while Bond returned his attentions back to MI6, to M, to radioing through to Alec to tell him he was doing everything wrong and getting sworn at in Russian.

The party exploded everywhere at once, the moment Q woke up on Boxing Day.

006 and 009 were on active missions, but every single other double-oh agent had flown to the States to make a Christmas party for their convalescent Quartermaster. It was a little odd, given that Q couldn't actually sit up on his own, but they were insistent: they were all orphans, but Q had always been a parental figure. He looked after them, cared for them, and they were damn well going to make sure he had a decent Christmas despite everything that had unfolded in the previous couple of weeks. They would end worlds for their Quartermaster, and Q could only remain wide-eyed and stranded, as he was handed Christmas crackers and nobody sang a single Christmas song, but played Monopoly until Q passed out.

Stark Tower was not the worst place in the world to spend Christmas, ultimately.

Bond’s fingers laced together carefully with his, the agent kissing his quartermaster’s head gently. “I’ve got you,” he murmured gently, and let Q drift into sleep, party hat perched precariously on his head while Tony and Sherlock exchanged cracker jokes like lethal weapons and somehow didn't notice the smell of burning cookies, M succumbed to jetlag, the double-ohs played cards with lethal results and Jarvis lamented the state everything was getting into.

-

_“...But Uncle Mycroft…”_

Never again, Mycroft swore, as Hamish did something unspeakable to the oven and Lily located Mycroft’s revolver, and Mycroft reminded himself for the millionth time why he was quite content to remain on his own.

Lily nearly shot her cousin.

Hamish nearly blew up the kitchen.

Mycroft took a deep breath, cut all power to his flat, and informed the children that they were not having Christmas dinner if they continued to behave quite so appallingly. Not to mention that their presents were being confiscated for the foreseeable future.

Both children had inherited Q’s ability to look terrifyingly bereft.

Mycroft had never quite developed immunity.

The power went back on. The two children were locked out of the kitchen, leaving Mycroft to finish off Christmas dinner while they wreaked merry hell on the rest of the flat; when he emerged, bearing a turkey that probably weighed more than Lily, it was amazing how quickly silence fell.

“Wow,” Lily said, in quiet awe.

Hamish shot him a toothy, terrifying grin. “Is this why your diets don’t work?” he asked, with a touch of Sherlockian malice.

Never, ever again.

**Author's Note:**

> Let me know your thoughts, guys and dolls! Hope it was fun...  
> Jen.
> 
> _These are the guilty prompts. Some have been a little more... out of the box than others. If you're not sure where it's been integrated, feel free to ask. Hope you enjoy!_
> 
> * Giant MI6 Secret Santa!! – anon  
> * You know what I want? Q and Bond are making a snowman and dress the Christmas tree. Christmas fluff! – shipimpala  
> * 00Q- Q leaves out cookies for Santa and Bond eats them, making Q very cross. :D – badwolfbadwolff  
> someone getting absolutely plastered drunk, stripping off, and running through the streets shouting something along the lines of ‘my wang controls the weather!” – placeofold  
> * Aha yay! I hope you're joyously swamped in xmas by now, and having a good one yourselves! Just in the spirit of seasonal sadism, I wanted to join in! *isn't in the least bit sorry* So comedy/romantic, 00Q. On a mission somehow at xmas party, part ways, JB finds Q barely clad and trussed up with xmas hat, grumpy. only clothes for Q are costumes and they bamf their way out with xmas items present -baubles, garrotted by tinsel, etc... or any of that individually ;D LOVE CHU guys! <3 – shadyquiet  
> * For the xmas special, could you do a 00Q where Q gets kidnapped days before christmas, and Band finds him early christmas morning? Q whump and 00Q hurt/comfort are my favs. – slytherin-queen5516  
> * i have asked you once, but now when you want christmas prompts so bad, i ask you again. i just hope you don't think its too stupid. Q is 8 years old, and he has a younger brother, and one day he feels ill and gets to the doctor. he says to Q that his brother has a heart infection and that he won't make it for chrismas. after a while he meets bond, a 12 year old kid who has been told that in the london uderground, lives an angel that can cure sickness. none of them know that james is the angel. – anon  
> * Tony, Q and Sherlock are related somehow, and so Christmas at Stark Tower with all avengers and various plus ones? – the-midnight-blogger  
> * Bond gets invited to Qs place (or invites himself) for Christmas where Mallory is q’s father – ovitamea  
> * Promo: adults forget about Christmas because they are so caught up in work so ham and lily spend the holidays alone. Myc gets angry when he finds out and makes the adults stop and make it up to their kids by throwing them the best makeup Christmas – anon  
> * 00Q: James is on a mission and Q thinks he won’t make it for Christmas eve. James, instead, is on his way home but keeps this secret so he can make Q a surprise by coming home just for dinner. Fluffy Christmas eve <3 –mrsstellar00Q  
> * It's a Wonderful Life - 00Q Style – and-she-was-a-child  
> * The Christmas thing should involve Sherlock baking Christmas cookies - anon  
> * CHRISTMAS THING: Alec and James rope the other double oh's into making sure Q has a proper Christmas because they are all orphans and haven't had one since they were children! - madwriterscorner


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